


Longing is like the Seed

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Bible, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-31 22:46:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6490294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary searches her heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Longing is like the Seed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emmadelosnardos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmadelosnardos/gifts).



> So, trying a more Mary-focused approach, prompted by the excellent and insightful emmadelosnardos.

If she were honest with herself, Mary would admit she is in love with Jedediah Foster. She has allowed herself to contemplate this admission, usually at night if she has found a few hours uninterrupted. Then her body is exhausted but her mind frets until she comes right up to the edge of the thought. From the precipice, she can see how her yearning for him colors the sky inside her, crimson and rose like a July sunset. She feels it in her flesh, the palms of her hands curving to the angle of his jaw, the way her body wants to bend to him like heliotrope, the desire to consume. She admits it is not merely respect for his surgical skill and inventive mind or admiration of his reckless, indomitable spirit, but every love in every way.

She is beyond blushing-- a wise widow. She takes solace in the knowledge she did not love him when she nursed him. She cannot forget, however, the feel of his body against hers, how she held him while he retched. She remembers the Gothic architecture of his spine as he arched against her breastbone, as she embraced him, her arms banding his ribs. She is sure he cannot recall how he laid his head against her shoulder, seeking her only as comfort, his curls damp and the sweat on his cheekbones silver in the moonlight. His skull had lolled heavy on her breast, his white throat exposed. She knew he had come back to himself when he began to chide her and was glad of it, but now she wished she might have some of it back, yet with his eyes watching her. That clumsy kiss, his fumbling grasp were less to her now than the moments in the night he sank back against her, quiescent and suffering, she his only balm.

She sees sometimes he looks at her with such comprehension she must needs find some other occupation or risk, not discovery, but confession. She had expected that having loved one man well, she would be expert and yet feels like a novice, unfamiliar with matins and lauds. She had loved Gustav tenderly and with warmth, but woven in him was melancholy while Jedediah’s devil was his fury. They were suited now, both familiar with grief and battle, as Gustav had been the right reagent catylyzing her earlier self. She knows she is greedy, wanting again when she had taken her share before, but even if she fell on her knees in prayer, she could not renounce her desire. 

She turns, as she knew she ought, to her small black Bible, wrapped in silk against Virginia damp. She reads, but the New Testament was a void. As she turns the pages earlier, she finds no consolation in Ruth, seeking succor while pledging her love to a man who might reject her, nor the Song, its green couch one she longed to share with him. Reading in desperation, she discovers only lustful David coveting Bathsheba and she closes her eyes in shame as Eliza Foster’s spectre glided before her, murdered Uriah. She did not fling the book aside, as it was her mother’s. She wishes instead for her mother’s hand on her head, that consolation. She knows the expression she would see in those grey eyes, acknowledgement and compassion but also inviolate honor and the expectation that Mary would find all three within herself.

She must bear this alone. The chaplain is a good man and a gentle midwife for a soldier’s dying, but he was a man and could not understand her woman’s heart. Her mother is dead and her sister far away in Boston. Mary knows she would need to find a way to swim with the current of her affection, lest its tumultuous waves drown her. She could not dash her honor and Jedediah’s on the shoals of her passion, but she must admit a little of the truth to herself so she might find a way to shore. She might aid him, humor him, offer sympathy and wry smiles at Hastings’s antics. With every act, she would be keeping safe her mouth from its declarations, from the soft and seeking kisses she wanted to bestow. His marriage bound them both and she could not allow herself to consider the ways to emancipation. Either avenue would be paved with suffering for Jedediah and she knew he might falter and not recover. 

If she were honest, Mary would admit she loves him. She will spend her nights eager for sleep, for the world of dreams in which she may be a happy wife, a contented mother, an eager beloved. She hopes every night to enter the square home with beams of cedar where she may pause in cooking the dinner to caress his dear face, and later fold back the linens of their bed to exult in him. Mary is wise, so she is not honest, not very much and not very often.


End file.
